


how to stack your stones

by wrack



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Child Soldiers, Force-Sensitive Finn (Star Wars), Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-23 09:36:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23176069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrack/pseuds/wrack
Summary: Running a school for ex-stormtrooper children was never going to be easy - but some days are harder than others.(Jannah and Finn, charting a path in peacetime.)
Relationships: Finn & Jannah (Star Wars)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 23





	how to stack your stones

“You could be a Jedi,” Jannah said. The words tumbled out of her mouth in a blur, as if she’d never had to deal with the consequences of reckless speech before. She didn’t have time to rethink them. Finn turned to her, reserving some of his attention for the grassy yard where a few of the kids were playing. He was listening with more than just his ears, she noted. How she knew that, she couldn’t explain – the set of his shoulders, the tilt of his head, the fact that their understanding had reached a point where she could read him at least as well as her own squadmates. Seeing it right there in front of her pushed her to go on. “Rey’s out there somewhere building a new order. I know she taught you a few things before she left. You could be helping train her students, instead of…”

She trailed off. Finn’s face, almost always dangerously open, was unreadable. He remained silent for a couple of seconds, then nodded toward the kids – it was still difficult not to think of them as _recruits_ – in the yard. “Instead of helping untrain ours?”

Somewhere on the perimeter, a carrion crow chattered. The sudden _ack-ack-ack_ set all Jannah’s nerves to jangling. She held her breath, waiting for its flock to start up in response. When they didn’t, she swallowed a sigh of relief and said, “Yes.”

The flock went off, ringing off the high walls like a delayed echo. Whatever was upsetting them had to be pretty close to the compound. Without even stopping to consider why, Jannah looked to Finn for cues. He didn’t seem frightened, but there was a slight frown on his face. He’d cocked his head a little to the side, as if he were trying to decipher a fuzzy transmission. She was halfway to grabbing her pistol for an unscheduled patrol round when he said, “I think… I think there’s another fight happening. About to happen. Just now.”

A scream cut through the air. Not an animal, this time.

“Oh, I’m really sick of being right,” Finn muttered, just before he jumped to his feet and took off running. Jannah followed him down the steps and through the drifting sand, ankle-deep again even though they’d swept the whole place to First Order standards just yesterday. The yard had fallen silent, which worried her far more than an ongoing uproar would have done. When they got there, LR-3574 had skinny little Adali down on the ground. The other kids had formed a tight ring around them, hemming them in. Carr, who’d been supervising playtime, looked far closer to real panic than Adali himself did. Jannah had seen him throw himself bodily at much bigger enemies to protect his squad, but he took a step back when LR kicked out at him.

Finn stopped a few strides away from the circle. Almost against her will, Jannah felt her anxiety begin to ease off. He was an anchor, a still point they could all fix their eyes on. As if someone had asked her a question, LR spat, “He stole my rock.”

Jannah glanced at Carr. He gave her a hopeless shrug.

“I didn’t mean to!” Adali said, fear of getting in trouble winning out over his fear of LR. “I just… I… I thought…” His voice faded to a whisper when LR glared at him. “I wanted to be in the game.”

“It wasn’t a game,” LR said, baring her teeth. Her anger had already started to burn itself out. “It’s my rock. I need it.” She loosened her hold just enough to let Adali slip out from underneath her; he rolled to his feet in a single, fluid movement, then backed away toward the sanctuary Finn’s legs offered. LR came up into a crouch, bouncing a little on her toes. Her whole body quivered with directionless energy. “I need it back,” she said, in a much smaller voice. “Please.”

Another helpless look from Carr. It was the kind of glance he would have given her on a mission that was falling apart: _fix this, Sergeant._ Not for the first time that day, Jannah felt woefully out of her depth.

Much later on, Finn said, “Rey’s not looking for new students.” Jannah, who had been examining a long, mysterious scratch on her forearm, stared at him. It had been a long enough day that she’d almost forgotten their previous conversation; after they’d calmed both Adali and LR-3574 down ( _Lara,_ Jannah’s mind kept saying, though she knew LR would correct anyone who didn’t call her by her full designation), they’d had lessons to teach, meals to serve, and a short trek down to the beach to guide and supervise. The reality of a secret school run by ex-stormtroopers for ex-stormtroopers did not quite match the sweeping fantasy she’d had in mind when she’d first plucked up the courage to put her idea into words. Fewer grand declarations of freedom and meaningful name choices, more meltdowns in the corridors and frantic midnight cram sessions to catch up on those parts of galactic history that couldn’t somehow be tied back into the glory of the First Order. And cleaning. So much cleaning. When you pried the enforced military discipline out of them, children were _messy._

The scratch wasn’t deep, but she sprayed it down with antiseptic anyway. No such thing as overcautious. When it stopped stinging, she said, “Oh? What is she looking for, then?”

“Another way, I think. She doesn’t want to rebuild Skywalker’s school. Pretty sure she doesn’t even want to be a teacher.”

 _You’d make a good one, though._ All of them had a decent grasp of what made the kids tick, which made sense given that all of them had been those kids not so very long ago – but nobody else could read them quite like Finn did. When Naiya went for weeks without speaking or Voth fell asleep in class after a rough night, he was the one who picked up on what had set them off. Sometimes, he even knew how to fix it. Carefully, she said, “How are Adali and LR doing?”

He hesitated, glancing at her and then away. Did he think she was testing him? After a little while, he said, “Adali’s taking a nap. LR… just feels like LR.” He paused. She could almost see him weighing his next words, as if he were about to try and explain himself to an officer. “Rey taught me to hear them when they most need to be heard. Right now, that’s enough. I’m not running off to become a Jedi any time soon.”

“Not even if she asks you to?”

“She won’t. We both know where we need to be.” The words were underlaid with that odd serenity Jannah had experienced all of once in her life. “Could you run this place without me?”

“Yes,” Jannah said, not seeing any reason to dissemble. “But it’d make all our jobs that little bit harder. It helps to have someone around who can read minds – I know that’s not quite right, but it’s close enough for us ordinary mortals. And you were the first to get out. You’re living proof we can do it, alone if we have to. Even if we shouldn’t have to.”

“I wasn’t alone,” Finn said, pushing his chair away from the study table. He glanced over his shoulder, then sat back and put his boots up on it. The casual, undisciplined gesture made Jannah want to smile. “They won’t have to be, either. I’m staying.”

Absolute certainty. Had he sounded like that when they first met, or was it something he’d grown into in the months he’d spent learning to listen to the Force? Jannah wished she could dig back through her own memories and recover the sense of calm she’d felt the day she’d thrown down her weapon and walked out of her life. She’d been up half the night taking notes on _My Stepfather’s Face,_ a clone deserter’s biography she’d earmarked as possible assigned reading material on her last New Republic archive skim. When she’d got to the part where Cut Lawquane’s daughter quoted him as saying that the hardest part of life after the army was not having anyone around to shout at you before you got the chance to mess up, she’d had to take a break.

“All right, then,” was what she said out loud. “That funding review is coming up fast, so if you feel like getting to work on those forms they just sent us…”

She couldn’t hold back a laugh at the deep, expressive sigh he gave. Her neck prickled. There was nobody standing behind her, but she still wanted to turn and look. She set her shoulders against the feeling - set them hard - and laughed again.

**Author's Note:**

> Title yoinked from “Children’s Work” by Dessa, which is a prime FO stormtrooper (and clone trooper) feelings song.


End file.
